Jetblue shifts service to focus on core routes

Seeking to increase profits, Jetblue is dropping flights to secondary cities and adding routes in core markets, the investment site Motley Fool reports.

Many of the changes affect service in the Washington DC, region, where Jetblue began flying out of Dulles International Airport and eventually added flights to and from Reagan National Airport.

The airline has shifted most of its flights to National and announced that it would end all service at Dulles in 2019, including flights to New York.

Priorities at National have shifted as well, with Jetblue announcing that it would cease flying from Reagan to Hartford and Tampa, instead using those slots to add more flights to Boston.

Most recently, the airlines announced that it will end service from Washington to Jacksonville, and Charleston, on October 26, effectively reversing most of the expansion at Reagan that the airline undertook in 2014.

Those slots will be used to increase service on popular routes to Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, and West Palm Beach — the airline will soon offer 15 daily flights from DC to Boston alone, for example.

The airline also will eliminate flights from New York to Charlotte this fall, opting instead to increase service between Boston and Charlotte.

“Jetblue’s decision to drop out of noncore markets where it mainly competed on price could lead to higher fares for travellers. But it’s almost certainly a good decision for the airline,” the Motley Fool reported.

“Jetblue has its greatest competitive advantage in cities where it has high market share – primarily Boston, but also Fort Lauderdale, New York, and Orlando. Reallocating capacity to those cities from places where it has low market share should help power strong earnings growth over the next year or so.”